Wednesday, December 29, 2010

M. Stanton Evans was the youngest editor ever of the Indianapolis News He was an early backer of Barry Goldwater for President. He was a founding member of the American Conservative Union, for which I was press secretary in the 1980s.

I played softball with Stan Evans, but was much better than he was. I was, after all, 20 years younger and the descendant of a Hall of Fame Chicago White Sox pitcher.

But Stan, who was an early editor of the National Review, was ever ready with a good quip.

Among his best was his expostulation of what he called, "Evans Law."

Evans Law went as follows: "Our people remain our people -- until they get into a position whereby they can do us some good. Then they cease to be our people."

Dan Proft is the Illinois personification of Evans Law.

He was a terribly promising young guy at Northwestern University. There he almost singlehandedly held up the alternative conservative Northwestern Chronicle newspaper and the campus conservative movement overall.

But then something went awry.

Proft got the scent of power and cash.

First he ran off to manage the campaign of pro-abortionist, feminist, Elizabeth Coulter.

When asked to rectify this with his ostensible Right-to-Life views, he said that no one North of North Avenue could be elected unless they took a pro-abortion stance.

Yet these days on WLS radio he scoffs at his partner, Bruce Wolf, who recommends the very same thing.

Then Proft went off to milk the taxpayers of the corrupt Republican controlled berg of Cicero (Alphonse Capone's former stomping grounds) with contracts for "PR services" all over the place.

Yea, that passes the smell test.

Proft, when he was engaged in his ill-fated, backbench campaign for Governor, avoided the immigration issue like the plague -- pretty much mirroring RINO Mark Kirk on that score.

Even today he blabs about the need for Republicans to have "a conversation" with the illegal alien lobby.

And what might that mean?

And Proft asserts the knee-jerk Chicago School of Economics defense of so-called "free trade."

"We all live like kings because of the cheap products we can buy from China," Proft says.

"And we gain all of the financial benefits because we create the proprietary rights to the software intrinsic thereto," Proft says.

But Dan Proft lives in the posh Lake Point Tower, 505 North Lake Shore Drive.

There, at that exclusive retreat, where even the tawdriest units sell in the high 6 figures, one is marvelously insulated from the real Chicago.

There, one doesn't meet the 40-something black guys who grew up in the stable homes of steelworkers from the now long-gone South side Chicago steel mills. On North Lake Shore Drive, one doesn't see these guys who are now cadging quarters to subsidize their daily intake of malt liquor and sleeping under bushes in the park at night.

They don't allow riff-raff like that in Proft's rarified domain.

One reasonably questions whether those lost Chicagoans will be able to grab those great opportunities in the software development field that Proft so glibly recommends.

And, by the way, the Atlantic in its recent assessment of the Chinese hi-tech industry recommended that the Chinese industrial combine was now insisting that they take over those higher profit technological functions and were beginning to do so.

And when Proft's good ole buddy, the Reverend Meeks, suggested that the racial spoils system should only apply to blacks -- and not to Latinos, Asians or women -- Proft did not recommend that affirmative action should be summarily tossed onto the ash heap of history -- as any sensible conservative would -- but rather said that his pal, Meeks had "misspoke."

YIKES!!!

As my old pal M. Stanton Evans postulated: "Our people are only our people -- until they get into a position where they can do us some good. Then they cease to be our people"

I'm reminded of downstate IL Republican Congressman, Aaron Shock. He ran as a conservative and was widely touted as the boy wonder of the conservative movement. Then, last fall, he endorsed liberal Republican Liz Coulson over 3 conservatives for 10th district Congressman. Guess he just wanted to be a "member of the club." Fortunately, conservative Bob Dold won anyway.

A Word From The Publisher:

About The Chicago Lampoon

Chicago is a very funny city.

In fact, it is a windswept glacial burg that is the source of a never-ending supply of knee-slappers and outright horselaughs.

From the neophyte community organizer that it foisted on an unsuspecting American electorate to the mop-topped sociopathic boy-Governor that it sent to the Letterman show, to its storied depression era, tommy-gun toting philanthropists, it has produced some truly amusing and amazing characters.

It has a Mayor who is a former ballet dancer, who served in a foreign army and who threatens political enemies by sending them dead fish in the mail. It has 50 sleepy Alderman and 5, usually somnolent professional sports franchises

It has two Jesse Jacksons!

It has more potholes per capita than Nairobi, a creaky 1940s-era elevated train system and cops who get caught on videotape punching out bar maids and businessmen.

As we have since 2009, we are only going to report and comment on what actually happens in Chicago. To make up stuff this weird would tax our inventive capabilities to the limit (or at least as high as the, highest-in-the-nation, Cook County sales taxes.)

Meet The Editors

We're somewhere between Burkean conservatives and bomb throwing anarchists depending on the mood of the moment and the amount of restorative libation we have recently consumed.
But we're usually able to couch our maunderings in some pretty good journalistic prose.